Chapter IX
IX
Marin
“Disbelief” isn’t the right word. I took the mushroom chocolate, and I waited.
I’m the one who called Teddy. I didn’t stop him when he started talking about that night at karaoke.
Instead, I pulled the thread of the conversation further until we landed here.
“Regret” isn’t the right word, either. I wouldn’t have pushed us to this place on my own, but something in me has uncoiled now that we’ve arrived.
Teddy’s quiet on the other end of the line.
Copenhagen’s quiet, too. This time of night, there are the occasional bike tires whirling below.
Every so often, an ambulance. I miss the din of New York, which I play from my phone on nights when the lack of sound gets too loud.
I miss my gorgeous Tribeca apartment that is still shitty in some ways, as almost all New York apartments are.
My cortado at the Elk. Walking down Canal into a summer Friday sunset.
Making a guest bedroom out of sheets on my sofa for my sister.
And tonight, I miss Teddy. A New York fixture for me even if I’ve only seen him there once.
I adjust the AirPods in my ears, nestling into the pile of down pillows propped up against my headboard.
I hear Teddy sigh, standing at a crossroads after deliberating.
Am I smiling? It’s almost as if there’s no decision at all.
For the first time, I start to wonder if this was always where we were going to end up.
“I wish we were together,” he says. Normally, our banter is quick and clear. But tonight, his tone matches mine—slower, like every syllable counts. “Not at work or in that old car, but in the massive bed you’re bragging about.”
Fighting to ignore every instinct and move through the mental walls I’ve built to organize my life, I try to imagine another way. What if it was simple? What if how Teddy makes me feel—present and giddy and unencumbered—isn’t something to work against?
I can already picture myself tomorrow morning, charting my plan to reconstruct my barricades. But tonight, as terrifying as it sounds, I just want to be here, with him.
I sink deeper under my covers, a hand mindlessly pulling at my pajama pants’ drawstring. He’s gravelly when he says, “I wish I was in bed with you, Marin Voss.” I can picture him rubbing the back of his neck as he says it.
I’m lightheaded, dazed by how one sentence can unlock something in me. Teddy wants me. I can’t pretend it’s news, but hearing the words, I have to acknowledge how much I want Teddy, too.
Ignoring the creep of early morning, I make a decision of my own.
“If we were together—” I pause, noticing my index finger tracing the edges of my underwear.
My breathing hitches. “I’d want you to be naked.
It’s strange that we’ve never seen each other without clothes on, isn’t it?
” I’m emboldened by something, using all my strength to push away thoughts of pragmatism and control.
“Considering we’re—and these are your words, not mine—‘strictly colleagues,’ I don’t think it’s that strange,” he says.
“I never—” He cuts himself off, and his voice deepens.
“I’m sorry. I’m nervous.” His laugh is like an exhale between us, easing the tension just enough for him to continue.
“I’d give anything to see you naked, Marin.
To see how much you’re like what I’ve imagined. ”
My feelings, stuffed down and stifled for all these years, flood my body with warmth.
My body tenses, then loosens. My jaw unclenches, and my legs splay open, the way they always do when I touch myself.
I can almost remember his scent, inches from his face in that karaoke room, all those hours in the car.
“I’m nervous, too,” I whisper back. “But I wouldn’t be if you were actually here.
Something about being around you makes me feel like we’ve always known each other.
” Teddy is grinning. I can almost see it.
My chin tilts, his imaginary finger lifting it to his face.
“That feeling unlocks something in me. And it terrifies me.”
“Me too.” He sighs. We could still retrace our steps, call it a fluke, pretend the conversation never happened. But he goes on.
“I think about our kiss all the time. Most days,” he says. “It feels so juvenile—I never think about any other kiss—but that one plays on repeat like a movie scene for me.”
The tiniest sigh escapes my throat as I lift my hips and slip my underwear and pajama pants off, bunching them under the covers.
“I think about it, too. I half expected you to come knocking at my hotel room. For the two of us to fuck that night.” Maybe there’s a more eloquent way to slam the door of plausible deniability than the word “fuck,” but I can’t think of it, not in this state.
“Trust me, Marin, I wanted to. Had to settle for jerking off thinking about you down the hall. More than once that night. You had me so worked up I couldn’t sleep until I got you out of my system.
Only I’ve never been able to get you out of my fucking system.
” Blood rushes between my legs at the thought.
In my head, he’s here, his thumb brushing across my lips, trailing down my neck, skimming across my nipples that are pressing against the ribbed cotton of my tank top.
I suck in a shallow breath, and I know he can hear it, register the nature of my reaction to his confession.
“That kiss made me feel like a teenager,” I whisper.
“So does this.” I cringe at myself. Not because it isn’t true—that the heady feelings I get around him aren’t real—but because for me, thoughts of those years bring up weeks of hospice, waves of grief.
I push myself to be present. To be here in this new feeling, even though it’s uncharted.
To experience Teddy as something other than part of the life I left behind.
All I want is to give in to him completely, to tell him he’s on my mind all the time and that I want him in every way imaginable, but that’s a leap I’m not ready for.
I settle for the silence of our breathing, growing heavier by the moment. I settle for his voice in my sheets.
“If I was in Copenhagen, naked in your king-size bed, I would kiss you again.”
I reach for a pillow, stuffing it under my hips, feeling myself open at the thought.
He keeps going. “This time, I wouldn’t stop there.”
My fingers slip between my legs, tentatively touching a part of myself that feels safe. I’m trying to ignore the intruding thoughts that insist on reminding me I’m having phone sex with someone I have to see at an all-hands meeting.
“I’d pull you close enough so you could feel how much I want you. How much I’ve always wanted you.” His nostalgic tone would normally be a turnoff. Not tonight. “Marin, you wouldn’t believe how hard I am just thinking about you right now.”
I touch myself, uninclined to reach for a vibrator, focused instead on superimposing Teddy’s hand on mine. His palm bracing against my hip. His fingers teasing me, touching me everywhere but not giving me enough.
I squeeze my eyes shut, picture us, and describe what I see.
“If we were together, I’d press you against me so you could feel how wet you make me.
” At once, I realize all the times I’ve imagined some version of this and shoved those visions away in favor of something I deemed safer.
Something that asked for less of me. It’s as if all the bottled desire has nowhere to go but here.
“Fuck, Teddy, how wet you’re making me.”
“I want to go down on you for hours. I don’t want to stop until I know the taste of you so well that I can call it to mind whenever I want.” I feel my shoulders digging into the mattress, fighting for purchase against all this longing.
“Teddy.” It’s all I can get out, but I know it’s enough.
“I wanted to pull over on I-80 and rip that fucking button-down off of you. That stupid black bra.”
I bring my other hand to my breast, picturing him kissing my neck while the heat builds.
“You are the most beautiful thing.” He says it like a fact, without hesitation. “I can’t imagine wanting anyone more.”
I come, my entire torso shaking, letting myself go without concern for what I sound like or what it might mean for us.
I come as a release, something pent-up unspooling from the place where my hips stretch open.
It’s bigger than fear. It’s deeper than lust. My body lands me right here, breathless in my bed, desperately trying to understand how I would survive being with Teddy in real life if this is what phone sex with him does to me.
“Fuck, Marin,” he whispers. “I want to keep that sound.”
“It’s yours, Teddy. You earned it. You made me come, made me make that sound, without even putting your mouth on me.”
He gasps, my name a strained noise deep in his throat. I pull the comforter over my head. Already, there’s an awkwardness, somehow palpable in the space between us. Or maybe it’s a feeling I’m not used to. Vulnerability. I listen to our breaths, letting the sound anchor me.
“I loved talking to you, Mar.” My eyes prickle that he knows I can’t handle anything more pointed than that.
I feel turned inside out, the soft belly of my longing for Teddy exposed.
I don’t have the energy to make a list of the reasons why he’s not right, why our lives could never coalesce, why this warm, unthreatening man scares the shit out of me.
“I loved talking to you, too.” I wipe my eyes. “Goodnight, Teddy.” I hang up before he responds, check the time—3a.m.—and toss my phone across the bed.